


Let Me

by celeste9



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-22 11:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9606200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Sometimes Poe reminds Leia of her brother. He has a bright cheerfulness to him that seems to remain no matter what else is happening around him.Sometimes, though, sometimes he’s only faking it. If a lifetime in politics has taught Leia anything, it’s how to spot when someone is putting on a show.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [igrockspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/gifts).



> You mentioned you liked women being protective of men and Leia talking Poe through the loss of a pilot, so I hope you'll enjoy this treat! :)

Sometimes Poe reminds Leia of her brother. He has a bright cheerfulness to him that seems to remain no matter what else is happening around him. 

Sometimes, though, sometimes he’s only faking it. If a lifetime in politics has taught Leia anything, it’s how to spot when someone is putting on a show.

He stands in her office and puts a data stick on her desk. “I know you always do it yourself but I wrote something, too, for Saani’s parents. I thought you might send it with your letter.”

“Thank you, Poe. I’m sure they will appreciate hearing from you. You knew her better than I did.” Leia watches Poe carefully. He is holding himself in a taut line and his face is still, like he’s trying hard not to let on what he’s thinking.

“She had a crush on Jessika,” Poe says, his lips twisting into something that wants to be a smile but isn’t quite managing it. “We thought it was cute.” 

He walks out of the room and Leia doesn’t stop him.

When the room is empty Leia sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. Saani. Just a girl, younger than Poe, younger than Leia’s son. Smart and hopeful and idealistic. Her X-wing had exploded in the stars and Leia has nothing to offer her parents but a painfully written condolence letter, telling them that their daughter was a hero and her sacrifice won’t be in vain.

Empty words to a parent, when your daughter is dead.

Leia had thought she was done with such letters. Now she is writing them for beings who could be her children.

Later, when it’s night, Leia knows Poe won’t come to her. Too difficult to fake cheerfulness when it’s only the two of them, and she knows he won’t want to burden her. Poe always thinks it’s his job to make sure Leia has everything she needs, but he tends to forget that a relationship, even one as ill-defined and quiet as theirs, isn’t one-sided. He never wants to add to her worries.

He doesn’t seem to realize that caring for someone is inherently worrisome and that that is exactly what she signed up for when she started sleeping with him.

Leia finds him sitting in the dirt, his back against the wall of the hangar bay. She supposes he must find it comforting. She’s actually mildly surprised he isn’t _in_ the hangar bay, though perhaps it’s quieter out here.

She sits beside him and he startles, as if he’d been caught up in in his own head enough not to notice her arrival. “General! Was there something you needed?”

“Only your company.”

“I’m sorry, I should have gone to see you but I--”

“Poe,” Leia interrupts. “I’m not asking you for anything.”

He doesn’t say anything for a few moments, just watches her, and Leia can see the struggle on his face, the attempt to seem happy when she knows he’s actually miserable. Eventually he gives up trying. He must know she will know it’s fake. 

Poe rests the back of his head against the wall. “This is sort of like how we met, you know? I’ve just watched someone I care about get blown up.”

“When your pilot, Lieutenant Muran,” Leia says cautiously, “when he was killed you were angry but you weren’t guilty. You didn’t blame yourself.”

“I know who’s to blame for Saani,” Poe says, rubbing dirt between his fingers. “Same as Muran. The First Order. It wasn’t my fault. But that doesn’t… that doesn’t really make it any easier.”

“I know.”

“I guess you do.” Poe looks sideways at her. “I suppose it _never_ gets easier.”

Leia could lie to him. She could tell him what he wants to hear. She could tell him what would make him feel better.

But she doesn’t. That isn’t how she operates, and she doesn’t think Poe would thank her for it.

“No,” she says. “It doesn’t. Not ever.”

Leia has lost so many people and she still remembers them all. She remembers Luke’s gunner on Hoth, Dak Ralter; she remembers Garven Dreis and every other pilot who lost their life during the attack on the first Death Star; she even remembers the names of those she never met, people like Jyn Erso, who died on Scarif recovering the plans to the Death Star.

“How do you go on?” Poe asks. “How do you keep doing it? How do you cope?”

He sounds so lost, so unlike the confident, brave man Leia trusts more than most. He sounds _young._

“You fight,” Leia says. “I know it doesn’t sound like much. Actually it probably sounds a bit like a propaganda poster. But that’s all you can do. You remember what they died for and you make it worth it. You fight for them. Anger… anger is a good motivator.”

Luke would be so disappointed. But Leia has never been like Luke. She doesn’t see the problem with a bit of righteous rage.

Sometimes she wonders if she got that from Darth Vader.

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of anger where it counts,” Poe says. “Put me in a ship and I’d be happy to show you. Just point me at the bad guys.”

Also how they met, Leia thinks, though Poe had been a bit outnumbered for much of anything. The same guts and reckless bravery that would have seen him disciplined if not decommissioned by the New Republic had been exactly what Leia had wanted in the Resistance. 

He got that from his mother. Sometimes Leia wonders what Shara Bey would say to her if she were still alive, if she knew what Leia was doing with her son, dragging him into a war Shara and her husband had fought to prevent, taking him into her bed.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Leia says. 

“Then what should I do now?” Poe’s face is lined in shadow and he looks oddly vulnerable, his expression open and searching. His fingers drift towards Leia’s hand.

She turns her palm over in an invitation and Poe grasps her hand. There is no one here to see.

Leia thinks about asking what Poe wants to do, if he wants to be alone, if he wants to have a drink, if he wants to be with his friends. She doesn’t ask, though, because she knows that isn’t what he wants. He wants her to tell him what to do, one fewer decision to make, an opportunity to relinquish control.

Poe might not blame himself for Saani’s death but he was the one out there with her, giving commands, and he was the one who lost her, who couldn’t do anything to save her.

“You can come with me,” Leia says, half a command and half an offer. “You can come and warm my bed.”

Poe hesitates. The skin of his palm feels dry and warm against Leia’s. “Is that… what you want?”

“You know, I can take care of you, too,” she says, a little bit chiding but mostly, she hopes, gentle. Leia was never much good at gentle but she tries.

“You don’t have to.” He seems… not quite afraid, exactly, but wary. 

“I know. Maybe I want to.”

“Yeah?”

Leia tries not to roll her eyes. “Yes.”

There is no one here to see so Leia raises her other hand to Poe’s cheek and leans over to kiss him. He melts into it easily, one hand at the back of Leia’s head, like he was waiting for this and didn’t want to ask. Closeness, Leia thinks, and touch. Poe has always found comfort in that.

“I’m twice your age, Poe Dameron,” Leia says quietly, keeping close so he’ll meet her eyes, “so I think it’s about time I looked after you for a change.”

 _Let me do this,_ Leia thinks. She has been a general for so long it’s easy for everyone to forget that she is a woman, too, with wants and needs and desires. Poe tries so hard to fulfill them but he ignores what is really the most basic of wants. 

Leia is tired of sending people out to die. It would be nice to give a little comfort for once.

When Poe finally smiles, he isn’t faking it.


End file.
